Circumscription - Competition

D. Robert Carniero

Robert Carniero created another argument focusing on a concept he defined as circumscription.

A. Population Growth

B. Restricted Space for Agriculture

C. Possible Tribute


Carniero's model focuses on pressures to maintain an ever increasing population that lives within a "restricted" space. Leadership develops as a result of this pressure and the need to organize to alleviate this pressure.

This theory grows out of an hypotheses which emphasizes the importance of population growth and population pressure as driving forces for change. Carniero formulated his hypothesis using South American examples, but applied it to the Near East as well. The hypothesis is based on general regularity about the environmental settings of early civilizations throughout the world. Carniero argued that these civilizations arose in areas of circumscribed (bounded and limited) agricultural land. Each area is bounded by mountains, seas, or deserts, which sharply delimited the area that simple farming people could have occupied.

Carniero saw expanding population could not accomodate itself by colonizing new lands because of these limits. Instead, it had to intensify production on lands already being used, i.e. elaborate irrigations systems, plow agriculture, etc. He believed that military conflicts between groups became more frequent and losers were not able to flee to new farmlands. They were assimilated into the winner's society as a lower class and contributor of tribute.

Successful militarists were rewarded by economic wealth, increasing amounts of land, and a conquered class of workers along with whatever tribute they could tax. There were adaptive advantages of organizing and controlling a successful military operation quickly leading to institutionalization in the form of an early state. The state then grows in size as a result of external conquests.

Population growth in itself is insufficient to engender warfare, but population pressure does engender warfare if the expanding populations is constrained either by environmental barriers or by competing social groups whose populations aree so dense as to preclude expansion.

A somewhat similar model focuses on the issue of stress at different points in a process of change. This is considered:

Scalar Stress in Societies

Stress can stem from: